Instructor
David Peters
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Instructor
David R. Peters, CPA, CFP, CLU, CPCU, MST, MBA
Founder & Owner, Peters Professional Education
David Peters is the Founder and Owner of Peters Professional Education in Richmond, VA, and is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as an Investment Advisor Representative (IAR) with Peters Financial LLC. He has over fifteen years of experience in financial services, including 3 years in the hedge fund industry and six years in the insurance industry.
David was the first-ever Chief Financial Officer at Compare.com - a position he held for over three years. He is a national CPE Instructor/Discussion Leader for Surgent, Kaplan, the AICPA and Don Farmer Tax Courses. He regularly teaches courses in accounting, finance, insurance, financial planning, and ethics throughout the United States.
He holds four master’s degrees and contributes regularly to various CPA publications, including NCACPA’s Interim Report, SCACPA’s CPA Report, and VSCPA’s Disclosures. He was also a co-author of the Virginia CPA Ethics course in 2018, 2019 and 2020 – a required course for all CPAs licensed in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Education
Certifications
Activities & Associations
Most financial leaders would agree that budgeting is easy when business and the economy are stable. When revenues and expenses are expected to remain the same, the process becomes merely an exercise in carrying over what was done before to the current year. However,what happens when we are not sure about how the market will react to our product? What happens when the competitive landscape changes? In this course, we will discuss budgeting techniques and considerations when business lacks stability. Through a combination of theory and real-world examples, we will explore how to build flexibility into our budget -so that it can inform and drive decision-making when we don’t quite know what is ahead.
• Recall the difference between a forecast and a budget
• Identify the difference between top-down and bottom-up
budgeting
• State the key elements of a flexible budgeting approach
• Define key cost drivers
• State how behavioral biases may affect the budgeting process
• Identify how headcount efficiency may be measured
• Define scenario planning
• Recognize best practices and controls for managing budget
changes
• Budgets vs. Forecasts
• Cyclicality
• Core Earnings & Sustainable Growth
• Identifying Key Forecast Drivers
• Reasonableness in Forecasting
• Approaches to Budgeting
• Budgeting Variances
• Horizontal Analysis
• Flexible Budgeting
A basic understanding of budgeting
techniques
CFOs & Controllers who are involved in the budgeting process
